Neil G Jay

Lol sorry should have said the were top frame hives. I'm also doing a double stack of supers in the centre of the 20 framer with small covers either side of the supers so I'm hoping the bee's will create a double width brood box which I'm hoping will fill the supers quickly. I'm converting an old hifi cabinet with a glass door(which will have a sheet of plywood blocking it) into a Slovenian hive and I'm going to try a japanese hive too. Just want to see how the bee's work differently in different hives and which allows them to be disturbed as little as possible and allows them to manage themselves. Any suggestions and ideas are all welcome. Thanks in advance.

Well spring is nearly here and I've been busy making 6 and 8 frame Nuc's and 20 and 35 frame top bar hives which take National hive deep frames. The kids have painted them and I just need to do some splits from my hives and put some out for catching swarms.
I want to post pics but it won't allow me to for some reason.

Hi everyone. I'm a regular Permies reader and watcher from Pontarddulais, Wales in UK and regularly research for  formation on projects I'm looking to do. I have I've got an allotment which I have 2 Hugelkultur beds on and use the Ruth stout mulching method. I keep bees on my kitchen flat roof and grow a lot of my fruit and veg. My 3(about to be 4) children all love planting, and growing and eating what we grow. I don't use slug pellets ()instead I use slog gone) and plant more than I need to account for pests etc. I look to chop and drop weeds and share any glut of produce withe the local community via local churches. I'd be glad to hear if there were other permies users close to me.
Regards to all

Couldn't you have two different circuits. One circuit AC/DC 240v (uk)  and whatever the norm is for the USA,  for the normal items like TV,  washing machines etc and a 12v DC run off deep cell batteries for the lighting using car LED's which are really bright but don't use that much voltage and have an inverter to allow you to use the DC power as AC/DC if you're using a lot of 240v. That's what I'm thinking of doing if I can do a low impact build. It will take a lot of power usage away from grid use especially at night when most people don't tend to have much running. Just a thought.

I've recently seen this thread re-incarnated and thought I'd give a little bit of info.I've got a homemade 4" basic 90° rocket stove with a 3" 30° gravity feed fine which I use for burning wood and old cooking oil but tried small piece charcoal in it the other day. Once it was well alight with wood and warmed up I filled the gravity feed tube with charcoal and boy did it heat up. It burnt really well and burnt everything in the tube till it was so hot the horizontal tubing was glowing red and there was no smoke at all. So I guess it will work with coal it would just need to be small pieces and have a mesh stand to all air to get through under it to keep it going. I burn pretty much everything in mine and will be looking to wrap copper pipe around the vertical pipe to heat my poly tunnel and my children's play house sometime soon. I will try to post a picot my rocket heater soon.

Hi all. Just thought I'd post up about a little rocket heater I had made from a 4" gate post I had for free. It was around 5ft long so I had it cut at 45° 2 ft from one end and welded back at a 90° angle then had a gravity feed tube put onto the horizontal pipe.I had some plates welded to the Base to keep it upright and off the floor.  It burns a treat and because it's 3mm steel it gets plenty hot too. I burn wood and drip feed old cooking oil in it and once warm is pretty much smokeless.

Hi, I did a portable rocket stove/mass heater for my house. Because I rent and I'm not able to have a wood burner or rocket stove in the house. So what I did was I had 3 x 25 litre metal drums  welded together with a basic 90° pipe inside it. Then packed it with perlite and slag rock that I found on a beach not far from a steel making plant. It had a metal lid on top of it. I then adapted/cut up a shopping trolley/cart, put a strong metal Base plate that can take the weight as it was pretty heavy. What I did then was I did a burn outside for 2-3 hrs till the mass in the drums was pretty hot(too hot to touch, then let it burn out and when the fire had gone out, pushed it in my back door and into my kitchen in the early evening and it stayed there till the next morning, and was still hot then. I regulated how much heat came from it by putting foil over the top of the flue pipe, as hot air rises from the inside of the upright as it was heated/warmed by the mass. I did use thin pipe which burnt through after two years but it kept my 3 bed house toasty warm through the night even on cold nights here in the UK. It was even hot enough to keep the house warm through to the aftenon the next day so was near enough piping hot for 20hrs. I've got thick steel pipe this year and will be changing it to a 2 drum rocket stove as the 1st one was VERY  HEAVY. Hope this is helpful.

Welcome Charles and Stephanie to this forum. I'm already a big fan of Charles's videos on view tube and have already purchased one of his books.  I look forward to reading his blogs on this forum when he posts them.
Regards to both and all.

Path through raspberry canes to shed

Pic with pond mluld